(Archive) Guilty Flavours

Our ever-increasing mountain of plastic waste is an insurmountable problem.

Plastic production is not decreasing and the current system of recycling is failing to keep up. Guilty Flavours is a radical proposal for how humans can harness our own bodies to eliminate plastic forever – by eating it. New biochemical processes involving digestion enzymes and engineered bacteria could allow humans to safely consume plastic. Starting with vanilla flavour, this project explores how we can harness this process to create fully edible molecules transformed by living organisms.

The ice cream is displayed in a locked freeze as it needs to be tested for food safety.

This highlights the time-consuming and ethically-controversial nature of evaluating the plastic-derived ingredient: in fact, despite its chemical similarity to vanillin, whether natural or synthetic, the testing process is still lengthy as considered a completely new ingredient and a new technology. This underscores the urgency for finding innovative solutions and rapid change in our society and politics of the food system to address pressing environmental issues.Therefore, the ice cream will be locked and frozen until we, as humans, will make a decision on what to do with it. This is real and ready now, but are we?